Classics and Religious Studies Research & Scholarship

Neil Bernstein’s  most recent book,  Poppaea Sabina: The Life and Afterlife of a Roman Empress  (Oxford, 2025), was published on June 20. His book chapter: “Latin Sophists and Rhetors From the Age of Trajan to the Age of Constantine,” also recently appeared in  The Cambridge History of Later Latin Literature , ed. Gavin Kelly and Aaron Pelttari. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025). Volume 1, Chapter 10. In addition, he has received a contract from Oxford to publish Statius, Thebaid 6: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary , co-authored with Antony Augoustakis. He delivered a paper at UC-Davis on Lucan's Bellum Civile in March and will give a paper at Vanderbilt in October on Statius's Thebaid.

Brian Collins taught his popular online course CARS 2410: The Global Occult  during the second summer session. He continued co-editing The Routledge Companion to the Mahābhārata , contributed entries on Raymond Buckland (Seax Wicca founder) and the Church of All Worlds for an upcoming exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Sex, and submitted a 5,000-word essay on sacrifice in Hinduism and Buddhism for the Bloomsbury Handbook of Mimetic Theory . He also conducted interviews and attended a music festival in Buena Vista, CO, for research on his new book, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Metamodern Music and Mythology .

Cory Crawford delivered an invited lecture at Yale Divinity School in April titled “Who’s Afraid of a Female Priest? Biblical Narratives Confront Kenite Traditions.” He presented three research papers: at Cambridge University on “Alphabets in a World of Hieroglyphs,” to be published in an edited volume; at the American Society for Overseas Research on “Hazor Ceramic Rattles and the Sensory Experience of Cult,” to be submitted to an archaeological journal; and at Boston College’s “Graphic Signs of Religion in Antiquity” conference on “Iconic Politics and the Philosophy of Perception.” In May, he led the Ping Institute Summer Seminar for regional high school teachers on ancient writing systems. Over the summer, he served as field supervisor for the Türkmen-Karahöyük Archaeological Project in Turkey, accompanied by three OHIO students, with findings to be presented and submitted for publication this fall.

Myrna Perez completed a fellowship at the  Linda Hall Library of Science and Technology  and was elected a fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion. She published  Criticizing Science: Stephen Jay Gould and the Struggle for American Democracy  ( John Hopkins University Press), and authored “ The Colonial Life of Sociobiology ” ( Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences ) and “Taller Than a T‑Rex” in Greedy Science: Creating Knowledge, Making Money, and Being Famous in the 1980s  (John Hopkins University Press). She gave invited talks at the Penn (“Christian Nationalism and the Afterlives of Scopes”), Yale and Denison (“Criticizing Science”), and Vassar (panelist, “Science & the Culture Wars”) and delivered the keynote address at the University of Erfurt’s “Truth Politics Between Science and Society” conference.

Loren Lybarger delivered an  invited lecture  at the University of Oslo in June titled “Religion and Identity in the Palestinian North Atlantic: Chicago, Copenhagen, and Oslo.” The talk reported findings from his current research on Palestinian refugee and immigrant experiences in Scandinavia. He continued his fieldwork in Oslo and Copenhagen over the summer. In February, he gave the  keynote  address at the 11th Annual Middle East and North African Studies Symposium at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR. The talk, titled “Transcending Catastrophes: Transformations of Palestinian Identities Since the First Intifada,” drew from his research in the Middle East, North America, and Northern Europe. 

Fred Drogula was awarded the  Society for Classical Studies Excellence in Teaching Award, as well as OHIO's Jeanette Grasselli Brown Teaching Award in Arts and Sciences. He has a new book forthcoming from Oxford University Press titled Spheres of Control: The Origins of Government in Early Rome , which provides a new reconstruction for the formation of the Roman Republic. He also has a related article forthcoming from the American Journal of Philology  titled “The Origins of Law in Early Rome,” which challenges traditional views on how the Roman legal system developed. He has been invited to give a paper in Oxford (UK) this fall exploring the intellectual history of Roman concepts of authority.